Political MoJo

Following years of negotiations, Iran and six other world powers have finally reached a historic agreement set to curb Iran's nuclear capabilities. In return, longstanding international sanctions will be lifted.

#IranDeal shows constructive engagement works. With this unnecessary crisis resolved, new horizons emerge with a focus on shared challenges.

The accord, perhaps the most significant diplomatic victory of Obama's presidency, was struck between Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, after a grueling 18-day negotiation in Vienna, Austria. It includes an agreement to allow Iran to continue its nuclear program, but reduce its current stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent and its centrifuges at its main enrichment facility by two-thirds, for at least a ten-year period.

Under the agreement, United Nations inspectors will also be allowed into the country, but their entry is not guaranteed. If denied, the world powers would convene to assess the situation.

Hours after the announcement early Tuesday morning, President Obama praised the landmark agreement and indicated he would veto any legislation attempting to halt it, in a televised address from the White House.

"Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region."

"I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal," Obama said.

On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to top federal drug enforcement and health officials requesting that they do more to conduct and facilitate research on the health benefits of marijuana. Among other things, she urged the government to end its monopoly on the supply of pot for research purposes, coordinate large-scale epidemiological studies on marijuana use, and assure scientists that their work on pot won't jeopardize their other federal research funding.

"While the federal government has emphasized research on the potential harms associated with the use of marijuana," says the letter, which was signed by Warren and seven other Democratic senators, "there is still very limited research on the potential health benefits of marijuana—despite the fact that millions of Americans are now eligible by state law to use the drug for medical purposes."

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services made a widely publicized move to streamline the approval of medical-marijuana studies, but Warren argues that this should be just the start of a broader effort to legitimize and institutionalize research into the benefits of pot. Her letter urges HHS to conduct its own clinical trials and facilitate communication among the 23 states that have legalized pot as medicine "in order to derive a more accurate picture of marijuana use and treatments across the country."

The senators also appear eager to see the government reevaluate marijuana's listing under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category reserved for drugs, including heroin and LSD, that have "no currently accepted medical use." They ask for a timeline for analyzing existing pot research and making a recommendation for re-scheduling the drug. Their letter also asks whether the analysis will include comparisons with tobacco and alcohol.

The Pentagon is expected to announce its plan to lift the military's longstanding ban on transgender service members as early as this week, according to the Associated Press. The plan, which is currently being formalized, would allow transgender people to openly serve in the military and protect current service members from being discharged based on their individual gender-identities.

Just last week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter sat down with President Obama to discuss the plan. In February, both Obama and Carter expressed their openness to such a policy change. Once formalized, military leaders will have six months to work out the logistical issues before fully integrating transgender service personnel into the military.

While the president officially repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" back in 2011, which ended the military's ban on gay people, transgender service members were not included under the policy change. This measure seeks to change that.

Following Sunday's news that Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman had tunneled out of prison, the GOP candidate unleashed a Tweetstorm in which he claimed the kingpin's escape vindicated his controversial comments that Mexico sends criminals and rapists to America.

When will people, and the media, start to apologize to me for my statement, "Mexico is sending....", which turned out to be true? El Chapo

In the minutes following today's announcement that Ellen Pao, Reddit's embattled interim CEO, would be stepping down, users of the site responded with glee. Pao has been widely criticized by many of the site's unpaid moderators for her recent tone-deaf firing of a popular employee—see here for more on what really happened with that—and for ignoring the moderators' needs and contributions to running the platform. Yet beneath the celebration lurked a disturbing undercurrent of racism. As of 2:45 p.m. PST, the second most "upvoted" comment beneath the announcement was this:

The biggest problem with the comment isn't the mocking of Pao's Asian name. It's the commenter's handle, "DylanStormRoof." Dylann Roof, of course, is the young man accused of massacring nine people at South Carolina's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last month.

Reddit's trolls have been out to get Pao ever since she shut down five toxic subreddits last month, including one called r/shitniggerssay. They also aren't psyched that she called out Silicon Valley's misogynistic culture. That's not to say that Pao's handling of Reddit's most controversial communities is the only reason she's unpopular with users of the site, which is, after all, the 10th most trafficked on the internet. But today's reaction illustrates the challenges her replacement, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, will face if he wants to rein in the site's most offensive tendencies.

Update, July 10, 2015, 5 p.m. PT: Cooler heads on Reddit have since taken over, as they often do, burying "DylannStormRoof"'s comment and up-voting a reply pointing out its racist connotations.

In a statement on Friday, the FBI said a background check flaw allowed Dylann Roof, the suspected gunman behind last month's fatal shooting in Charleston, to purchase the gun that killed nine people inside a historic black church. From the Times:

A loophole in the check system cleared the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said. Those conducting the background check did not have access to that police report.

"We are all sick this happened," said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. "We wish we could turn back time."

Speaking to reporters about the loophole, Comey said Roof had admitted to previous drug possession charges, but the background check flaw failed to alert authorities and thereby prevent Roof from obtaining a weapon. According to NBC News, "unlawful users" of controlled substances are prohibited from buying a gun.

Following the massacre on July 17, President Obama expressed his continuing frustration with Congress' inaction on gun control, reminding reporters, "This kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries."

Earlier this week, Roof was indicted on nine counts of murder, one count of weapons possession, and three counts of attempted murder.

In a short, historic ceremony on Friday morning, the Confederate battle flag was finally lowered and removed from South Carolina's statehouse grounds, three weeks after nine black parishioners were murdered at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church. The removal comes more than 50 years after the state first raised the battle flag to protest the civil rights movement.

The removal of the flag, which quickly emerged as a national issue following last month's massacre, was met largely with praise during Friday's brief ceremony, where chants of "take it down" could be heard, though protestors were also present.

On Thursday, Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill into law calling for the flag's removal.

"Twenty-two days ago, I didn't know that I would ever be able to say this again, but today, I am very proud to say that it is a great day in South Carolina," she said during the bill's signing ceremony, where family members of the people killed in Charleston were in attendance.

Update (7/10/2015): OPM director Katherine Archuleta resigned on Friday morning. "I believe it is best for me to step aside and allow new leadership that will enable the agency to move beyond the current challenges," she said in statement. Archuleta insisted on Thursday that she would not step down, but news that the OPM hack had affected millions more people than previously stated led a growing number of members of Congress to call for her firing. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush even released an ad slamming Archuleta on Friday.

The federal government announced on Thursday that—yet again—the huge hacks of sensitive government personnel records revealed last month are even bigger than previously thought.

Officials now say that information on 21.5 million people was stolen—more than 19 million security clearance applications, plus other sensitive data such as fingerprint records from another 2 million people who know or are related to the applicants. They told the Washington Post it's now "highly likely" that the hackers, likely working for China, stole every such application submitted since 2000 to the Office of Personnel Management, which conducts security clearance investigations for almost all government agencies. Intelligence agencies like the CIA and National Security Agency do their own checks into potential clearance holders.

Even before Thursday's announcement, current and former government officials were calling the stolen applications, which include highly personal and potentially damaging data such as medical histories, records of drug use, and the names of foreign contacts, an intelligence goldmine for China or other potential perpetrators. "That they have all this clearance information is a disaster," Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official, told the Associated Press last month. FBI director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that the hack is a "huge deal."

Officials previously admitted the hackers had taken up to 18 million of the applications, in addition to 4.2 million social security numbers that were stolen in a separate data breach. But even with the new, higher numbers revealed on Thursday, OPM Director Katherine Archuleta told reporters that she would not resign her post.

Martin O'Malley amped up his effort Thursday to win over the Democratic Party's left wing—to out-Sanders Bernie Sanders—and become the progressive alterative to presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, releasing an antagonistic open letter to "Wall Street's Megabanks."

The former Maryland governor's desired niche in the Democratic field is currently occupied by Sanders, the Vermont senator and a self-described Democratic socialist who is drawing massive crowds and surging in the polls. Sanders and O'Malley have been duking it out with a series of policy proposals aimed at outflanking each other on the political left, with O'Malley the underdog in this two-man face-off.

Yesterday, in response to Sanders' pitch for tuition-free college, O'Malley came out for debt-free college. Today, O'Malley's brandished his aggressively worded missive to Wall Street.

"So here’s the bad news—for you: As President, I have no plans to let up on you," O'Malley wrote in his open letter, circulated to supporters and reporters, along with his plan for financial reform. "I’ll work tirelessly to eliminate the unique danger posed by the handful of too-big-to-fail banks. And while I’m doing that, I’ll finally bring real enforcement and oversight to the federal government—to agencies and departments like the Department of Justice, Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Commodity Futures Trading Commission—so that they start doing the job the American people expect them to do and stop sitting on their hands."

O'Malley's confrontational approach to Wall Street isn't just about Sanders. It's also a challenge to Clinton, who has longstanding ties to Wall Street and a history of taking large speaking fees from big banks. And though Clinton praises Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, she hasn't adopted that progressive champion's favorite Wall Street reform policies.

Read the full O'Malley letter below:

Open Letter to Wall Street’s Megabanks

As you may have read, I’ve expressed grave concern about the state of our national economy, especially as it relates to the behavior of a select group of financial institutions on Wall Street—the institutions that you work for and represent. I have called for significant structural and accountability reforms to prevent another economic crash and protect hard-working families from losing their jobs, homes, and life savings once again.

Most of our financial system works quite well. Of the almost 6,500 banks in our country, most of which work hard every day to serve their communities, just 29 have more than $100 billion in assets and only four have more than $1 trillion in assets. The high-risk, reckless, and illegal activities of your megabanks were the primary cause of the 2008 crash, which caused the worst recession since The Great Depression, and cost the American economy an estimated $14 trillion to $22 trillion.

I know that many of you have tried to dismiss and undermine my calls for stronger reforms as “anti-capitalist.” Let me be clear- the ongoing reckless behavior of your megabanks isn’t capitalism—it’s the antithesis of it. True capitalism requires a level playing field on which everyone plays by the same set of rules. True capitalism requires competition. True capitalism means that just as businesses and banks can succeed—they can also fail.

Today, your—too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-manage, and too-big-to-jail—megabanks pose an enormous risk to the financial system, the economy, and American families. They are so big and so interconnected with the entire financial system that the failure of one or more of them could cause the collapse of the entire U.S. economy.

After several misguided deregulatory measures taken in the 1990’s, your handful of megabanks went from having assets of approximately 15% of our country’s GDP to now having assets of nearly 65% of our GDP. As your megabanks grew in size, who gained from it? Credit card fees didn’t get smaller. Mortgage rates didn’t go down. The median wages of Americans certainly didn’t increase. The only tangible gain we’ve seen from your institutions’ explosion in size is your ability to concentrate unprecedented power and wealth in the hands of your executives and to acquire the guarantee that all of your risky bets will be covered by taxpayers.

Now, because your institutions are so large, so leveraged, and pose such a grave threat to our economy, you don’t face the same rules of the free market that apply to everyone else. If your bets go bad, you don’t face bankruptcy—taxpayers bail you out. When things go well, the upside is all yours and you get to cash in exorbitant bonuses. This violates the very principle of free market capitalism.

For similar reasons, both your megabanks—and your executives—have been somehow classified as too big to prosecute and too big to jail. Exacerbating the problem, our financial regulation system is defined by conflicts of interest and a lucrative revolving door. Former financial executives are hired to regulate their former colleagues and, when they leave for government, they’re given golden parachutes. Then, they turn right around and return to the firms they were supposed to be regulating.

All of this explains why, when laws are broken, you and your institutions get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist—fines paid by shareholders that you can write off as nothing more than business expenses. No admission of guilt, no one faces jail time, everybody keeps their jobs — back to bonuses as usual.

As President, I would end this double standard of justice. It is bad for our economy, and it is bad for our country.

A strong American economy depends on a strong, financial industry that plays by the rules. And among the greatest victims of your megabanks have been the thousands of community banks that are the backbone of our economy. These banks provide the financing for the American Dream of homes, businesses, educations, and secure retirements. Yet they’re forced to compete on an un-level playing field—one where they bear the brunt of declining credit and wages—and where megabanks are rewarded with subsidies and bailouts.

So here’s the bad news—for you: As President, I have no plans to let up on you. I’ll work tirelessly to eliminate the unique danger posed by the handful of too-big-to-fail banks. And while I’m doing that, I’ll finally bring real enforcement and oversight to the federal government—to agencies and departments like the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Commodity Futures Trading Commission—so that they start doing the job the American people expect them to do and stop sitting on their hands.

If you—and your megabanks—which we, the American taxpayer, saved want to begin to restore the confidence in your leadership, you need to start by saying two things: “we’re sorry” and “thank you.”

Then, you have to do the right things: stop your war on financial reform, start following the law, and end your highest-risk, most dangerous activities so that your megabanks are in fact no longer too-big-to-fail.

Early Thursday morning, South Carolina's House of Representatives voted to approve a bill to permanently remove the Confederate flag from flying on the state Capitol grounds. The historic 94-20 vote followed hours of impassioned debate on Wednesday, including an emotional address by Rep. Jenny Horne (R), who reminded her colleagues she was a descendant of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

"I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday," Horne said. "If any of you vote to amend, you are ensuring this flag will fly beyond Friday. And for the widow of Sen. [Clementa] Pinckney and his two young daughters that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it."

The bill moves now to the desk of Gov. Nikki Haley's, who has promised she would sign it quickly. Once signed, the state has 24 hours to remove the flag from the capitol grounds. It will then be moved to the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum nearby.

"It is a new day in South Carolina, a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and one state," Haley said in a statement after the House's vote.

The renewed push to remove the battle flag was sparked by the massacre in Charleston last month that killed nine people, including Sen. Pinckney, inside a historic black church. Soon after the shooting, photos surfaced of the alleged gunman posing with the flag.